My buddy Steve, and fellow podcast cohost, shared some metal with me recently and amongst the pile was Grond, a band I wasn’t familiar with until hearing them today. When I previewed the files and the album artwork for Worship the Kraken popped up I no longer cared what kind of band they were, I was going to listen to this album.

Clearly, I mean clearly, there’s an H.P. Lovecraft influence here, or if this magnificent cover isn’t a dead giveaway, the title of the album is for sure. I know I know, another Lovecraft metal band? Aren’t there enough now to rival “viking” metal as it’s own genre? Probably, but to be honest, aside from the eye-catching cover art, title and some song titles, the music itself is more straightforward death metal with very little “Lovecraft-ian” elements in the music, and I’m perfectly fine with that. Lovecraft’s influence is spread wide and not all bands have to sound like Sulphur Aeon or Portal, and I don’t think it should be the only selling point for this band.

However, they are super solid, crushingly heavy, death metal band, taking equal influence from the plodding Florida scene to the riff-y Swedish scene, of which this throwback sound is most influenced by, but they also have some death doom moments that punctuate the heaviness. Just an overall heavy, crushing band. Nobody is going to be calling Grond their favorite band but they’re satisfying in all the right ways and are super ear wormy, or should I say, ear dagon-y? Yeah, I’ll stop now. Check them out if you like that stuff.